Kathleen D. Ryan
Kathleen is known for her work in turning fear-based organizations into ones where collaboration and trust are the keys to high performance. She is a principal of The Orion Partnership, a consulting firm based near Seattle, Washington that she formed in 1984 with her husband, Bud Orr. Over the years, their consulting services have concentrated on supporting executives as they meet the challenges of rapidly changing business environments, providing guidance on organization-wide culture change efforts, executive feedback, and senior level team development. Kathleen is particularly skilled at helping individuals and groups address the difficult-to-talk-about, underlying issues that frequently block high performance. A new emphasis in her practice is helping organizations quickly and effectively bring new executives on board, in collaboration with colleague Marlyse Cato.
Extraordinary Groups: How Ordinary Teams Achieve Amazing Results (Jossey-Bass, 2009), co-authored with Geoff Bellman is Kathleen's third book. Learn more about this latest work at www.extraordinarygroups.com. Her first book, Driving Fear Out of the Workplace: Creating the High-Trust, High-Performance Organization, was co-authored with Daniel K. Oestreich. First published by Jossey-Bass in 1991, it received the Society for Human Resource Management's 1992 Book Award; a second edition was published in 1998. Continuing her work with the issues of fear and trust, her second book, co-authored with Daniel Oestreich and George Orr, is entitled The Courageous Messenger: How to Successfully Speak Up at Work (Jossey-Bass, 1996). She has published a variety of chapters in other collections on the topics of accountability, collaboration, organizational transformation, resistance to change, group process facilitation, sexual harassment, and peer pressure. More about her books can be found in the Library.
In addition to her consulting work, Ryan is a founding member of The Community Consulting Partnership, a Seattle-based effort that helps volunteers improve their organization consulting skills while they provide service to a local non-profit organization. She also serves on the Board of Directors for Seattle University's Master's program in Organizational Design and Renewal. She has served as both a member and director of the Organization Development Professional Practice Area for the American Society for Training and Development. Ryan received her BA degree (1969) from the University of California at Berkeley and her Master's degree in Public Administration (1978) from the University of Southern California.
Kathleen's clients can be found in many sectors—technology, government, manufacturing, health care, philanthropy and other not-for-profits. Examples include Microsoft Corporation, the Clorox Corporation; the Boeing Company; Xerox Corporation; Premera Blue Cross; the FAA, the US Forest Service; the Universities of Washington and California; many local jurisdictions in Washington State; the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance; SSM Health Care System; the Oregon Health Sciences University Hospital; and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.
Books by Kathleen Ryan
